BCH Reports & Reviews

Once a year the Secretariat reports on the operation of the Biosafety Clearing-House. Primary data, such as the number and regional distribution of National Focal Points, as well as the number of records made available through the BCH, are reported below. Detailed reports on the activities and partnership arrangements that have been entered into, as well as feedback provided by Parties and other Governments on their experiences with the operation of the BCH, are also available from this page.

Notes:(1) The difference between the sum of the records listed in each category and the total number of records is due to the possibility that one record contains information for more than one category (e.g. a focal point may have more than one role); in this case the same record is listed two or three times in the breakdown. (2) In September 2009, following a revision of the common formats for the submission of information, hundreds of decisions under AIA (introduction into the environment) submitted in previous years, were made visible after the solution of an ambiguity in the former common format for the submission of information on Decisions under Article 11.1 (LMO-FFPs). (3) In September 2009, following a revision of the common format for the submission of information, more than 2000 risk assessment records were removed because they did not specify the LMO that was the object of the risk assessment. (4) In August 2008, following up a COP-MOP request in decision BS-IV/4, all experts previously registered in the Roster were removed. (5) In 2010 the categories Capacity-building opportunities, projects, training and education programmes and report on initiatives were merged in a single category. (6) Prior to 2007 the records contained in the Scientific Bibliographic Database and the Biosafety Information Resource Centre were combined in a single database (7) Data produced by Google Analytics

User survey, feedback and other publications on the BCH

The implementation and operation of the BCH are subject to periodic review, which include consultation with a wide variety of BCH users. Results of these reviews are usually submitted to the attention of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol (COP-MOP) as information documents.